


We Need To Talk

by tonia_barone



Series: Unexpected [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Barry Has No Respect For Personal Boundaries, Confessions Are Good For the Soul, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 03:25:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10845504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonia_barone/pseuds/tonia_barone
Summary: Iris and Barry have a necessary heart-to-heart talk





	We Need To Talk

**Author's Note:**

> I went back and forth with myself over if I was actually going to write this. By and large, I am happy with how the series ended; and I do consider Disappointed to be the end of the Unexpected series. That said, there was a part of me that felt that Barry would, eventually, confess and I wanted to see how that’d go. Iris isn’t an idiot, either, so I couldn’t live with the fact that she might never figure out he’d done something. Considering those two points, this fic was born. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

Barry was still acting a little off a week later; like he was sad about something.  Iris had the nagging feeling that he somehow knew she had been pregnant, and thought she’d miscarried.  It was the only thing that fit.  She just couldn’t figure out how he’d found out.  She thought back to two weeks ago when he’d begun acting strange.  He started treating her with kid gloves around the time she’d taken the home pregnancy test, but didn’t start _beaming_ and skipping around until a few days later.  If she didn’t know any better, she’d say that he knew she was pregnant, but that was impossible.  Wasn’t it?

Iris bit her lip as she considered everything that happened that week.  Barry began acting oddly a couple of days before her first appointment with Doctor Irving.  The only thing she remembered happening before the appointment, but after she’d taken the test, was that one evening she’d been more tired than normal and fallen asleep earlier than usual.  They’d been having tea, talking about their respective days, and she’d just…she must have been more tired than she’d thought.  She almost never fell asleep that early, but it _had_ been a stressful week, so Iris hadn’t thought anything of it.  She still didn’t want to think anything of it, because that would mean that she was drugged.  The only person there to drug her was Barry, but he wouldn’t do that to her.  Barry didn’t have a malicious bone in his body.

It was a few days after that that Barry began acting…happy; he was bouncy, joyful even.  It was as if he had a secret he wanted to share, but didn’t want to ruin the surprise.  Barry couldn’t lie to save his life, and he was even worse at keeping a secret.  It made the fact that he’d been able to keep being the Flash from her for so long so surprising.  After the fact, she could see how he’d been itching to tell her about it, but had somehow kept quiet.  At the time, she’d thought he was just struggling to tell her how he felt about her. 

So if she accepted that Barry somehow knew that she was pregnant, that still left the question of ‘how’.  Iris had only found out just before that by taking a home pregnancy test at work.  He would have had no reason to search the public bathroom at work, or even if he did connect her to the pregnancy test.  He could have asked Doctor Irving, but aside from that breaking patient-doctor confidentiality, Barry would have no reason to suspect that she was seeing the doctor to find out if she was pregnant. 

_If you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbably, must be the truth._

Iris felt a chill run through her as the only other explanation came to her.  Surely Barry wouldn’t have… Surely he wouldn’t have taken her blood somehow and tested her without her knowing.  He _couldn’t_ , could he?  Iris would have felt the prick, or found evidence of it later.  Right?

She remembered that night where she fell asleep early and had to cover her mouth as she fought not to be sick.  No.  No, no, no… Barry wouldn’t do something like that.  That would be an invasion of privacy, an assault on herself, a _violation_ to take her blood without her knowing, or her permission.  Barry… Barry wouldn’t do that.

Iris was an investigative reporter first and foremost, and no matter how many times, or how many ways, she thought about how Barry could have possibly known that she was pregnant it was the only thing that fit.  Barry had drugged her, and then taken her blood to test for himself.  He’d have access to do it in his lab.  She wasn’t sure how he’d known how to draw her blood so cleanly—phlebotomy wasn’t something they taught in forensics school—but he clearly had.

“Iris, are you okay?  You’re looking a little pale.”

Iris looked up at Linda, who had walked up to her desk with a look of concern.  A quick look around the room showed that none of her other coworkers were paying them any mind.  “Yeah, Linda, I’m fine; just feeling a little nauseous.  I guess lunch isn’t sitting right with me.”

Linda reached over to rub Iris’ back.  “I’ve got some Tums in my desk, if you think it would help.”

“Thanks, Linda, but I’ll be fine,” Iris replied with a forced smile. 

Linda gave her a penetrating look before nodding.  With a final pat on the back, she stepped back.  “Okay, then.  Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Iris nodded and watched as Linda went back to her own desk.  Left to her thoughts again, Iris began to plan.  The easiest way to get information out of Barry was to let him spill it.  Make him think you knew something, and he would fall over himself in an effort to apologize.  A part of Iris prayed that she was wrong, but the rest of her knew she was right.

***

It was a few days later when Iris decided to lay her trap.  She waited until it was the end of the day, when she was having her evening tea and Barry was sitting next to her on their loveseat to say, “Barry, we need to talk.”

She watched as Barry froze in the act of turning a page in the science journal he was reading.  With clearly feigned casualness, Barry closed the journal and set it down.  “That is never a good phrase.”  He turned to face her and gave her all of his attention, even as he nervously asked, “You’re not breaking up with me, are you?”

Iris shook her head.  “No, I’m not breaking up with you, Barr.”  She purposefully clutched her tea mug, then made sure her expression was neutral before saying, “I know, Barry.”

Barry gave her a look of puzzlement.  “You know…what?  That I love you?  Cause that’s not a secret,” he said with a sweet smile.

It took a lot of effort to keep from smiling back at him.  After a few tense seconds, as Barry’s smile began to drop to a worried frown, Iris tapped her mug pointedly with her engagement ring.  “Barry, I know.”

It hurt to watch the panic fill his eyes, but not as much as his softly spoken, “Iris, I’m so sorry.”  And just as she thought he would, Barry continued to dig his own grave.  “Well, no, I’m not sorry.  I’m sorry that I went behind your back, but Iris I had to know.  I didn’t want to get your hopes up if I was wrong.”

Iris took a deep breath that she slowly let out as she considered how to respond.  “Wrong about what, Barr?  Why did you drug me?”

The series of expressions that cross Barry’s face just then would be comical in any other setting.  Surprise, pride, dread, and wariness all flashing by almost too quickly for her to see them.  She must have really thrown him for him to not be slipping into the Speed Force to collect his thoughts; she knew he did it whenever he needed to think for a minute.  Finally, he replied, “You were showing all the classic symptoms of being pregnant, and I wanted to see for myself.  I’m sorry I drugged you to get the blood sample, but if I was wrong, I didn’t want to disappoint you.  We have so little to be happy about lately.”

Of course she already knew what the results were, but she asked, “And?”  She hadn’t planned it, but she knew then she’d come clean about her own subterfuge.  Iris just hoped that Barry would see her point of view on the matter.

Barry’s eyes welled with unshed tears.  “It was positive, Iris.  You were, we were, pregnant.”  He reached over to take her hand, like he was the one comforting her.  “But then a week later you got your period, and it was worse than usual.  You must have miscarried.  I’m so sorry, Iris.”

Iris drew in a shaky breath as she withdrew her hand from his.  “I have something to say, but first I want to address the _gross_ breach of my privacy and trust.”  Barry was looking more and more like a kicked puppy, but Iris remained strong against it.  “Barry, do you even understand how not okay it was to not only drug me, but to take my blood against my will?  I did not consent to being drugged or having my blood taken.  Please tell me you understand why that isn’t okay.”

Barry refused to meet her eyes as he nodded.  “Yeah, Iris, I know, but—“

“No, Barry, there is no ‘but’ here.  You effectively raped me.”  Iris didn’t hold any punches and watched as Barry flinched at that.  Good. 

“I, I, I mean…Iris I’m so sorry.”  He twisted his fingers together in a nervous gesture she hadn’t seen in months.  “I just didn’t want to get your hopes up if it was negative.”  Barry finally listed his head to give her an earnest look.  “With everything going on lately, I didn’t want to give you another disappointment.  I’m working so hard to save you, to change the future, and nothing seems to be working.  I just wanted to be able to give you good news for a change.”

Damn him, but Iris couldn’t remain stern in the face of his sorrow.  “Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t, I swear!”

"And we're going to have more long talks about this breach of trust in the future, Barr.  This was  _not_ an acceptable action to take."

"Yes, Iris."

 _No more stalling, West._   Iris made herself look at him as she admitted her side of things.  “But Barry, you wouldn’t have been telling me anything I didn’t know.  I took a home pregnancy test a few days before you drugged me.”  His look of surprise was so fleeting that she knew he must have accessed the Speed Force to consider everything she meant in that one sentence, because in the next second he looked so crushed and betrayed that it nearly killed her.  Iris said it anyway.  “I wasn’t sick that week, and I didn’t see Doctor Irving about a cold; I saw him about an abortion.”

Barry’s voice was small as he asked, “Iris, why?”

She wanted to take his hand, to comfort him as he had done minutes ago, but she couldn’t take it if he pulled away from her.  “The same reason you drugged me and took my blood without my knowledge: you are under so much stress lately.  Every failure to change the future is a weight you carry.  I knew if I carried it, if I told you, it would destroy you to lose us both when Savitar kills me in three months.”

“Savitar isn’t going to kill you,” was Barry’s automatic protest.  Then he seemed to consider his words carefully.  Iris wondered if he was aware that she could tell when he accessed the Speed Force; the spark in his eye was obvious if you knew to look for it.  “You had an abortion.  That’s why you were in bed.  Your period didn’t start, you were bleeding and crampy because of the…the procedure.”

“Yes.”  Iris could feel the tears running down her face as she watched him digest that.  She hated to hurt him like this.

There wasn’t an argument Barry could use that wouldn’t make him sound like a hypocrite and she could see the moment he realized it.  Still, she wasn’t surprised when he said, “I wish you had told me.  I would have liked to have been part of that decision.”

She finally reached out for his hand, and was grateful that he clutched it just as hard as she clutched his.  “I should have told you.  But Barry, it’s my body; it was my decision to make.”

There was genuine anger in Barry’s voice when he responded with, “I know that!”  He took a deep breath before repeating, “I know that.  I just wish you had told me so that I could have been there to support you.”  He took her tea mug and set it on the table, then pulled her into his arms.  “I love you, Iris West, and that will never change.  There is nothing you could ever do to make me not love you with every atom of my being.”

Iris sobbed.  “I love you, Barry Allen.”  She buried her face in his chest and cried for lost opportunities.  And if she felt her hair grow damp, it just made her cry harder.

**Author's Note:**

> Point the First, I want to thank [seattlemeg](http://archiveofourown.org/users/seattlemeg) for helping make sure I didn’t sound like a complete idiot. Thanks, hon.
> 
> Point the Second, I’d like to state again that I am not a Westallen shipper. I kinda hate that he’s with her, to be honest, and I tend to avoid fic where they’re the main pairing. And yet, I find them very easy to write. Will I write more in this series? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what else needs to be said, so probably not. 
> 
> Point the Third, of course that's a quote from Sherlock, though I snipped it from the original: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" 
> 
> And Point the Fourth, I’d like to thank everyone who’s commented and gave kudos; you’re why I write and I appreciate the support.


End file.
